Webinar Three Social Perception

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Emblem: a specific sign; like hand or body movements that signify something without using words

These emblems are not the same in every culture

Illustrators: when you use your hand to supplement your verbal conversation

Such as giving directions with your hand: "First you turn right *point to the right*"

Supports the verbal component

Affect displays: smiling; expressions of emotions

Regulators: gestures that help to continue a conversation; such as when you are having a conversation and the other person nods their head to show they understand

Adaptors: things that we often do when we are nervous or we do them because we are bored; subconscious touching or movement

Twirl their hair, bite their lip, play with earing

Sometimes a way to show that someone is stressed or bored, but it is not always saying that someone is bored

Personal space: when two people are standing close together it generally means that the two people have a relationship; friendship or intimate relationship

You don't always need to hear what someone is saying but you can understand what they are trying to say by their non-verbal cues

Ex. Teacher was at the grocery store with her roommates; two were German. They were talking and teacher said that she thought they could get all the groceries to the car without a cart; they asked how she knew because they were speaking German. She knew because she watched their behavior and picked up on the non-verbal cues

Deception: we tend to think that we are pretty good at detecting lying and deception when in reality we really suck; it is 50/50

The main reason that we are so bad is because we are focusing on the wrong things

Accuracy: sometimes we are more accurate when we know the person better; not always the case

We look at: pauses, stuttering, nervous behavior...Facial, Verbal, Body

People believe that liars look to the left when they lie...COMPLETELY FALSE LIARS DO NOT LOOK ANY PARTICULAR WAY

3 Things that People do when they lie:

Do give somewhat shorter answers

Use adapters more (sometimes people use adapters because their hair is really in their face...)--not the same as fidgeting

Their pupils dilate

Only people who can more accurately detect deception: secret service agents, some clinical psychologists trained in the area, CIA

Police officers and detectives are not so good

People are nervous when they lie, unless you are a sociopath/psychopath: we are nervous because we don't want to get caught lying; sometimes we are nervous because we are being interrogated (stressful environments)

Polygraph: doesn't detect lies instead nervousness

Attribution Theory:

Attributions are things we do on an every day basis: explanations to why people do things

Why do you think they did it?

2 types of attributions (that we talk about):

Internal: your personality, disposition; why did you act that way? Because you are that type of person

External: it's not you it's something or someone else that is affecting you; something about the environment

Make attributions about other people and ourselves

Covariation Model:

How we come up with attributions are unconscious thoughts

Consensus: do other people have similar responses? (look for words like always and similar)

Distinctiveness: Does the person respond similarly to other stimuli? (when see the word unusual in most cases is distinctiveness)

Consistency: Is the person's response consistent over time?

Ex: Student falls asleep in class

Internal: the student is lazy (something about them)

External: the student wasn't able to get enough sleep because something outside of their control happened (something happened to them)

Consensus: are other students falling asleep in class as well? Does that mean that you are just a boring teacher?

Distinctiveness: Does the person fall asleep in other classes as well? Maybe it's not me, it is not unusual

Consistency: Does the student fall asleep every class? Or just once a semester? If the student falls asleep consistently, then attributions can be made

Make judgments about people and formulate our response about the behavior; makes the teacher less likely to want to help the student

If the student is working full-time and going to school full-time then more likely to give the student benefit of doubt and help them out

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE):

Our tendency to first go with person explanation: you acted like a jerk therefore you are a jerk

Actors: they tend to play nice characters, but in real life they might actually be a jerk: same goes with actors who play bad guys

Forget the power of the environment

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